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Sparrow and Skyflash ballast rounds


Simon Cornes

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Can some tell me if a ballast round is literally a missile body with the fins removed and lead weights inside? If so, are the attachments for the front and rear fins still present along with any external conduits, or are they just tubular shapes with a missile nose ? I’m building a 1/32 Phantom so, at that scale, I’d like to get it right!!

Thank you 

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4 hours ago, Simon Cornes said:

Can some tell me if a ballast round is literally a missile body with the fins removed and lead weights inside? If so, are the attachments for the front and rear fins still present along with any external conduits, or are they just tubular shapes with a missile nose ? I’m building a 1/32 Phantom so, at that scale, I’d like to get it right!!

Thank you 

Ballast rounds were only used on Phantoms, in the front missile wells IIRC.

 

 Tornado used Drill rounds which were constructed as seperate inert missile components that were shape and mass representative of the real missile. There was no seperate drill Sparrow and Skyflash, the drill rounds were originally Practice Sparrow rounds painted white with light blue bands. There were never any sparrow drill rounds. When Skyflash was introduced  they were  all repainted L A Grey with dark blue bands around the tube  and discs on the wings and fins, overstencilled with the word "DRILL" in white, and these were retitled as  Drill Skyflash. 

I saw some of these missiles at the Museum of flight in Scotland titled as Sparrows, but they were actually grey Skyflash drill rounds. 

 

Selwyn

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Many thanks Guys

My interest on this occasion is with regard to Phantom ballast rounds which I know are blue but now I know that I can take a kit Sparrow and remove the wings and anything else, paint it a shade of roundel blue or thereabouts and I'll be okay. I assume they have some sort of lug which engages in the store ERU within the Sparrow fuselage recess. Did they have any stencilling? I can't recall seeing anything in photos?

 

Thanks for the Tornado info Selwyn, so these were given the standard drill colour coding for any store or dummy component of a store? I must admit I can't remember seeing anything blue in a Tornado fuselage weapon recess.

How can you tell the difference externally between a Sparrow and a Skyflash? I thought the XJ521 Skyflash was essentially a Sparrow airframe with a British proximity fuse, warhead and guidance gubbins? I assume you can only tell the difference from the outside by any stencilling? But I'm only assuming!!

 

Simon

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18 minutes ago, Simon Cornes said:

My interest on this occasion is with regard to Phantom ballast rounds which I know are blue but now I know that I can take a kit Sparrow and remove the wings and anything else, paint it a shade of roundel blue or thereabouts and I'll be okay. I assume they have some sort of lug which engages in the store ERU within the Sparrow fuselage recess. Did they have any stencilling? I can't recall seeing anything in photos?

As an ex armourer that was on a Phantom Squadron I have loaded ballast rounds on the forward  stations (4 and 6)  The rounds were steel castings with just the lugs to engage the Aero 27 launchers, no wing or fin attachments or any other connections, the aerodynamic nose cover was thin aluminium and attached with blind "pop" rivets, it could be replaced if it was damaged.  The nose was a slightly lighter shade of blue.  Hope this helps.

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7 hours ago, Retired Bob said:

  The nose was a slightly lighter shade of blue.

The nose cones looked like they had a slightly metallic sheen to them so I suspect they weren't primed before getting a thin coat of blue (or were anodised that colour?).

 

Duncan B

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10 hours ago, Simon Cornes said:

Many thanks Guys

My interest on this occasion is with regard to Phantom ballast rounds which I know are blue but now I know that I can take a kit Sparrow and remove the wings and anything else, paint it a shade of roundel blue or thereabouts and I'll be okay. I assume they have some sort of lug which engages in the store ERU within the Sparrow fuselage recess. Did they have any stencilling? I can't recall seeing anything in photos?

 

Thanks for the Tornado info Selwyn, so these were given the standard drill colour coding for any store or dummy component of a store? I must admit I can't remember seeing anything blue in a Tornado fuselage weapon recess.

How can you tell the difference externally between a Sparrow and a Skyflash? I thought the XJ521 Skyflash was essentially a Sparrow airframe with a British proximity fuse, warhead and guidance gubbins? I assume you can only tell the difference from the outside by any stencilling? But I'm only assuming!!

 

Simon

The ballast rounds were painted oxford blue IIRC. They were never used on tornado as there was no need for them.

The easy way to spot the difference between a sparrow and a skyflash is simple, sparrows were painted overall white and skyflash were painted overall  light aircraft grey. Both had the appropriate yellow and brown hazard bands.

 

Selwyn

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Thanks Bob, Duncan and Selwyn. It always helps when someone who has seen the real thing chips in! Thank you. And now I know how to differentiate between Sparrow and Skyflash - job done!

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11 hours ago, Duncan B said:

The nose cones looked like they had a slightly metallic sheen to them so I suspect they weren't primed before getting a thin coat of blue (or were anodised that colour?).

Correct Duncan, they were blue anodised aluminium, easily crunched. :whistle:

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I might be wrong here, but didn't the ballast Sparrow also have a blue anodised and riveted on back end as well as the pointy end?  Not entirely sure, I worked in the Missile Servicing Flights (MSF) at Wattisham and Leuchars, but on the Red Tops and Firestreaks, not that new-fangled Phantom stuff.  

 

Mark R

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31 minutes ago, rtfxwp said:

I might be wrong here, but didn't the ballast Sparrow also have a blue anodised and riveted on back end as well as the pointy end?  Not entirely sure, I worked in the Missile Servicing Flights (MSF) at Wattisham and Leuchars, but on the Red Tops and Firestreaks, not that new-fangled Phantom stuff.  

You are right, I had forgotten about the aft end, a slightly tapered blue anodised section "pop" riveted onto the rear of the body tube.  As for markings there was usually a white stenciled alpha-numeric code, 3 letters for the base WIL for Wildenwrath, CON for Coningsby, LEU for Leuchars etc, and 2 numbers, from 01 to however many were on the unit.  These were just used to keep track of the assets on the Sqn.  There might have been a centre of gravity stencil as well, the usual circle with a line through it. but it's been 40 years since I last handled these things. :winkgrin:

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2 hours ago, Fat fingers said:

Seem to remember that both flash and sparrow rounds were the same colour at some point, because we had to check the conduit on the side to tell the difference!

No, they were never the same colour, but the very first skyflash were hybrids with the grey forebody (wings forward) containing the Skyflash electronics and the warhead rocket motor wings and fins were white sparrow components.

 

Selwyn

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12 hours ago, Retired Bob said:

You are right, I had forgotten about the aft end, a slightly tapered blue anodised section "pop" riveted onto the rear of the body tube.  As for markings there was usually a white stenciled alpha-numeric code, 3 letters for the base WIL for Wildenwrath, CON for Coningsby, LEU for Leuchars etc, and 2 numbers, from 01 to however many were on the unit.  These were just used to keep track of the assets on the Sqn.  There might have been a centre of gravity stencil as well, the usual circle with a line through it. but it's been 40 years since I last handled these things. :winkgrin:

Yep, I agree with you. The ballast rounds we carried on the FGR.2's on 31 Sqn were as described above. I don't remember ours having any stencilling on them though.

 

XVTonker  :pilot:

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I think I've got  pretty good picture now regarding these. I'm working on a 74 Sqdn F-4J(UK) so I don't know if they would get base stencilling. Would the paint finish normally be pretty 'used' looking? I'm assuming that they wouldn't be loaded or unloaded very often - only to be replaced on the odd occasion by live Sparrows or Skyflash? I also wondered what they were acting as ballast for? A Phantom flies perfectly well with no weapons loaded so I assume it ballast for fuel? Did the later Phantoms have fin tanks? I'm obviously asking off the top of my head, not referring to reference but I assume a fully fuelled jet would be out of trim without the weight of the ballast rounds? 

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IIRC the FGR.2/F-4M had the F-4E-type No.7 fuel cell in the rear, so had the Oxford blue shapes for c/g issues.

The F-4E had the M61 rotary cannon and ammo drum in the nose.

 

HTH

 

Tony 

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